The US Supreme Court let the Trump administration, for now, withhold $4 billion in food aid that a judge had ordered distributed Friday to fully fund November benefits for 42 million people.

The administrative stay, issued Friday night by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, is designed to give a federal appeals court more time to consider the government’s request for a longer-term order letting it avoid making the payment.

The clash concerns the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, which has been caught in the middle of the government shutdown.

The administration has said it would provide partial funding. But US District Judge John McConnell in Rhode Island said that was inadequate because the complexities of partial payments meant the money might not become available to

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